Hubby had overnight stay in hospital recently due to serious chest & UTI infections (undetected by trainee GP - but that’s another story!). I was with him most of the time, but left him in the evening to sleep. Before I left him I requested a fresh jug of water & orange squash with a double handled drinking beaker for him. I made sure he had a few sips.
Upon my return the next morning, I could see from the skin on his forehead that he was dehydrated - despite having been on a saline drip with his IV antibiotics. His drinking beaker was empty & the jug was as full as it was when I left the night before. He has bad essential tremor and short term memory problems. No one had poured more orange squash for him or prompted him to drink. Two full urine bottles sat on his table throughout the day. No one was monitoring his urine output.
His blood test revealed that he was admitted with infection markers CRP 216 & discharged with CRP 111 (anything over CRP 50 is deemed a serious infection) No after care/monitoring plan was put in place except for a 5 day course of oral antibiotics & a recommendation of a repeat chest x-ray 4-6 weeks later.
Additionally, I requested a SAR (Subject Access Request) of his records and scans from his hospital stay. They arrived the other day & to my horror I discovered that his Ward Round Medicine notes were written in retrospect & not saved at the time of writing. How is this even possible? Obviously I will be making a complaint to the hospital (a large, well known West Country hospital) and to the CQC. CQC website states that a breech of Health & Social Care Act 2008 Regulation 17 (2) (c) regarding record keeping only results in a regulatory action, not prosecution.
Thank God that my husband didn’t have a cardiac event & another health worker need to access those medicine records. He is thankfully on the mend now & I am monitoring him closely as well as pressuring his GP practice for follow up blood tests, chest x-ray & physical examination.
A really good resource I have found is NEWS2 (National Early Warning Score) is a tool developed by the Royal College of Physicians which improves the detection and response to clinical deterioration in adult patients and is a key element of patient safety and improving patient outcomes.
For someone with little to no medical knowledge, it can be pretty scary caring for someone seriously ill & determining just how serious their condition is. After doing my hubby’s observations, several times a day, I filled in a chart in with scores according to his observational values. It really reassured & helped me to monitor my hubby’s progress and would have acted as an early warning sign of deterioration. I thoroughly recommend printing a copy of the chart, just in case. If a score of 5 or over is reached, then it’s definitely off to hospital.
Here is a link to the chart; https://www.rcp.ac.uk/media/eczf5mvm/news2-chart-3_news-observation-chart_2022_0_0.pdf
I am just wondering if there are any legal rights for being allowed to provide care outside visiting hours as a full time carer when the person you are caring for is in hospital? Or would this be covered by an individual hospital’s set of regulations?
If he has another hospital stay, I do not want to leave him in the “care” of nursing staff.